The Language Of Kindness: A Nurse's Story Quotes
"Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care." - Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25
"The saddest book you will ever read." - Description of a book filled with messages and prayer requests in a hospital church
"It’s the little things." - Ken, a volunteer at the hospital, explaining his motivation to help people
"We’re off to see the wizard…" - A playful moment in a hospital as people follow the yellow stripe
"I love walking through the hospital. Hospitals have always been places of sanctuary." - Reflection on the comforting aspect of hospitals
"All costs are to be borne by the hospital, whether the people come from afar or near, whether they are residents or foreigners, strong or weak, low or high, rich or poor, employed or unemployed, blind or sighted, physically or mentally ill, learned or illiterate." - Qalawun Hospital's policy in 13th-century Egypt
"Will the Scullery be sufficient accommodation for a nurse to sleep in, if necessary?" - Florence Nightingale's concern for nurses' practical needs
"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see." - Mark Twain
"We come spinning out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust." - Jalaluddin Rumi
"Childbirth is a natural process, not an illness." - Frances, a midwife, emphasizing the natural aspect of childbirth
"You can’t predict how it will go. Some of my women look fragile enough that they will break, and they pop a baby out like shelling a pea. Others look as tough as nails, and end up going down a pathway of medicalisation: drugs, epidural, forceps, C-section. You can’t tell." - Frances, reflecting on the unpredictability of labor.
"If you listen hard you can hear nothing and everything, all at the same time."
"Giving birth is the most natural, human thing of all. There is no greater expression of humanity."
"Birth holds the hand of death. We begin and we end at the same time."
"You are not dying. You need to push harder. You can do it."
"Some say [a caul] is a sign that the baby will be destined for greatness."
"Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood."
"We treat the whole patient, and the family, and don’t simply use the scan."
"Being chucked in a bath full of soup. Making a child laugh."
"When there is a large white cloud at the centre of her child’s scan, a mother needs something important to hold onto."
"We can both cry, and we can both laugh."
"Nursing requires building immunity to sorrow, but nursing children also requires being silly."
"The fundamental reflexes that should be involuntary are absent."
"Giving birth is the most natural, human thing of all."
"Neonatal nurses seemingly never get tired. They are often small and quick and fit."
"A decimal point out of place, during a complex drug calculation, can lead to the death of a baby."
"Each baby responds differently to the sensitive drugs, and the nurses, with their experience, simply get a feel for things."
"Babies (and children to a lesser degree) compensate to ensure they protect their vital organs for as long as possible."
"Babies have spots on the top of the head – the fontanelle – allowing brain swelling that would certainly kill an adult."
"Nurses understand that as well as surgical and technological interventions, family-centred care can have a significant impact on a baby’s cognitive outcomes."
"A doctor can explain this with science. But a nurse knows that the language of science is not enough."
"I am impressed by my colleagues who, despite having a thousand jobs in their heads, can make sense of this, and time everything perfectly."
"Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying."
"Promoting dignity in the face of illness is one of the best gifts a nurse can give."
"Nurses never know, when they go home, if they will see the patient they have cared for the next morning. It is not something you can think about too much or the job would be impossible."
"The other patients who remain in paediatric intensive care are either dying or not dying, but none are truly living."
"I am relieved that medical understanding of DKA has led to treatment that respects human physiology and compensatory mechanisms, and to caring for the whole person instead of simply trying to correct a set of numbers."
"Nursing means caring for the mental-health disorder exhibited by a parent, exacerbated by their child’s serious illness, while looking post-operatively after a child who has an underlying medical disease and a learning disability."
"An experienced intensive-care nurse can predict the numbers before the blood enters the blood-gas-analysis machine. She will tell the doctor the level of oxygen simply by the shade of red."
"It’s always busy, but today there is no time to get the ward straight and there are piles of items everywhere, half-cleaned, but not properly."
"A bad day in PICU is not when a child dies, but when you accidentally kill one."
"A hard day at the office is cuddling a baby as he is dying, and who is alone because his new foster carer can’t leave the other children, and whose birth mum’s whereabouts are unknown."
"Nursing becomes my life support. One of the greatest gifts that nursing has given me, aside from wonderful colleagues, and structure and job security, is the daily reminder that there is always someone worse off than you."
"The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members."
"Love is the only thing that matters. I’m talking about you and me, here: the love that you share with your wife, or husband, or lover, and your son and daughter, and then – perhaps the most precious love of all – with your grandchild."
"Imagine never being touched. Studies have shown that positive physical contact, such as hugs, are associated with measurable and meaningful attenuation of blood pressure and heart rates in adults."
"As Florence Nightingale observed: ‘If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint, if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing.’"
"Patients must trust their nurses; nurses must trust the doctors, and each other. But nurses must also trust their own ability and limitations."
"Nurses understand the dangerous end of developmental uncertainty: that families have often been through countless traumas following an early birth, only to end up on paediatric intensive care a year on, their now even more beloved child fighting for survival again."
"I have worked with nurses who are atheist, Buddhist, evangelical Christian, Muslim, Sikh and Catholic; nurses who were nuns, as well as those who belong to religions I’ve never heard of."
"Caring for dying patients is the most creative aspect of nursing. The language of spirituality is a way of putting into words something we don’t understand."
"The best nurses treat each and every patient as if they are a relative or loved one."
"Good nurses, though, will risk the danger and hurt in order to help."
"Nursing does not stop when a shift at the hospital ends. And it does not stop after death."
"The most brilliant and experienced doctors I’ve ever worked with are certainly the calmest, and seem to become even calmer in difficult life-or-death situations."
"If you come with me, then anything is bearable. Take my hand. Hold my hand tightly. Let us fling open the door and find whatever we find, face all the horror and beauty of life. Let us really live. Together, our hands will not shake."